Alrighty, the installation went well, and I've got a happily dual-booting system with a nicely large shared section.

Naturally, there are some issues.

First and foremost, some of the hardware buttons don't work - I haven't tested the four used as program hotkeys yet, but I'm pretty sure they won't work. More pressing however are the buttons that enable my wireless and bluetooth respectively. These appear to be hardware lockouts built around push-buttons. Bluetooth is nominally off under Windows, Wifi is nominally on.

Alrighty, the installation went well, and I've got a happily dual-booting system with a nicely large shared section.

Naturally, there are some issues.

First and foremost, some of the hardware buttons don't work - I haven't tested the four used as program hotkeys yet, but I'm pretty sure they won't work. More pressing however are the buttons that enable my wireless and bluetooth respectively. These appear to be hardware lockouts built around push-buttons. Bluetooth is nominally off under Windows, Wifi is nominally on.

The hardware buttons that are not the wireless and bluetooth buttons are usually just extra keys so the OS controls them, and you just have to set them up. I think you can do that from the xfce keyboard settings. For reference, these are some command you can use:

The biggest problem with getting the wireless to work isn't so much getting it up and running once things are detected (Vector appears pretty good with that, and I have done enough work in this sort of field to be able to debug most network-based problems fairly accurately) but more likely overcoming the hardware switches. Under windows, when I press the button for enabling/disabling the wireless, the interface isn't disabled - it just can't connect to any networks. I admit, I'm not entirely sure how that works, as I'm not really keen to tear my baby open and have a poke around just yet.

Additionally, as you can probably see from my lspci, the wireless is detected (Intel PRO 2200BG) and as far as I know, that works pretty well under Linux. Under windows, pushing the lockout buttons causes an OSD to appear (seemingly seperate from the OS, though I can't guarantee that - the text is the same size regardless of the resolution the screen is set at) which doesn't happen in linux. That's not to say that the same effect doesn't occur in linux, just that there isn't any obvious indication.

Incidentally, as for the program-hotkeys, the two that are dedicated for E-mail and Browser are detected just fine in Vector (I've already assigned Firefox to the Browser button) but the other two - the user-configurable in Windows - don't seem to register. It doesn't seem to matter if I change the keyboard layout to Acer Travelmate 800 either (I know, not strictly my layout, but at least it's the same manufacturer and machine family).

I'll go through the How-To again first though.

Oh yes - I've got one of those 4-way scroll buttons at the bottom of my touchpad. It's finicky even in Windows, but I'm quite attached to it, so if I can get it to work in Vector too, I'll be a happy camper.

Incidentally, as for the program-hotkeys, the two that are dedicated for E-mail and Browser are detected just fine in Vector (I've already assigned Firefox to the Browser button) but the other two - the user-configurable in Windows - don't seem to register.

The page you provided lagagnon was invaluable - combined with the How-To, I'm now able to connect wirelessly in Vector. Still some minor issues - no LED notification for example, even with the "options ipw2200 led=1" line in modprobe.conf - but that's minor. I can Vector wirelessly.

Interestingly, it appears as though the firmware required was already present - I was surprised by that.

Additionally, I've determined that the scroll-button corresponds to [X-Button1] through to [X-Button4] going counterclockwise from the top. However, it's considered part of the mouse, not the keyboard, so I'm not certain how to set them up to be used as scrolling. Well, I've got an idea, but it'd require I configure shortcuts in each application individually, which I must admit, I'm not too keen on doing. Having a read through xorg.conf so far hasn't been too helpful either.

I suppose the next thing to get onto would be getting the card-reader to work, but as I don't have any cards with me at the moment, actually trying to do so wouldn't be much use...

Will post more later tonight if I run into trouble getting connected to my home network (yay WPA encryption)

EDIT: LED does work, my mistake - just needed to reboot for it to come online. Apparently I need a driver for WPA encryption - I'm currently connecting on my less-secure short-range network (it only has MAC filtering as it's mostly for use with the DS).